About Redline

Redline is about developing an alternative vision to capitalism. We recognise there is no possibility of building a Marxist working class party in the current conditions in New Zealand of low horizons and little fightback. We aim to use the tools of Marxism to provide analysis of what is going on and, where possible, give a positive lead.

We welcome comments on all our articles but if you want to make direct contact with us at Redline, you can email us at redlinemarxists@gmail.com

Blog editorial collective

Imperialism study group

This study group, which is being initiated by some of the people involved in Redline, is primarily concerned with imperialism in the 21st century, but will begin with the first great Marxist work on the subject.

We will be focusing on studying and discussing three books:
V.I. Lenin, Imperialism: the highest stage of capitalism
Tony Norfield, The City: London and the global power of finance
John Smith, Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century: Globalization, Super-Exploitation, and Capitalism’s Final Crisis
You will need copies of these books – or, at least, access to them – to take part in the study group. For further info on the study group, email: redlinemarxists@gmail.com

Spread the word

If you like any article please help promote it (and the blog). Link to it on facebook and other social media, write about it anywhere or re-blog it.

We’re very happy to have other people re-blog our material, all we ask is that you mention the original source and put in a link to where it originally appeared on our site.

So the more people who spread the word about the blog, advertise and/or re-blog stuff the better.

Blog étiquette

We encourage discussion and debate but, unless there is a good personal security reason, people need to use their names or, at the very least, identify themselves to us. Anyone unhappy about that can always set up their own blog - it's free and easy to do.

People from this blog and people from AWSM (Aotearoa Workers Solidarity Movement) are currently working together to encourage people not to vote, and do so as a conscious political choice, in the September general election.

The facebook page will, in particular, be challenging the idea that Labour is some sort of alternative to National. That’s the argument of the Labour hacks and the soft left outside Labour.

They want you to vote for the party that, for the past two years, has been running a racist campaign against “people with Chinese-sounding surnames” and trying to blame them for the housing crisis.

A vote for Labour is a vote for a xenophobic party.

In the 2011 and 2014 elections, Labour campaigned to raise the retirement age.

The last Labour government presided over year after year of budget surpluses, while refusing to raise social welfare benefits.

The last Labour government presided over the expansion of zero-hours contracts.

The last Labour government opposed parental leave; its leader, Helen Clark, even said paid parental leave would be introduced “over my dead body”.

The last Labour government brought in a load of repressive, anti-civil liberties legislation after 9/11.

And, not content with bringing in repressive laws, they went after left activists and attempted to frame-up a whole bunch of them on absurd “terrorism” charges. The ‘terror raids’ saw several hundred military and armed police descend on Tuhoe country, terrorising people in and around Ruatoki. Homes of activists across the country were also raided.

Although most of the charges were so flimsy they had to be eventually dropped, Labour’s police state raids and charges made life hell for the arrested activists for several years. And veteran Maori activist Tame Iti and fellow activist Te Rangikaiwhiria Kemara were successfully stitched up and imprisoned for several years.

A vote for Labour is a vote for that.

The last Labour government threatened to end social welfare benefits for people in areas declared “unemployment black spots” and told unemployed people in these areas to move.

A vote for Labour is a vote for that.

The last Labour government joined in the invasion of Afghanistan and sent NZ troops to Iraq just in time to met the deadline allowing NZ companies to bid for ‘reconstruction’ contracts’.

A vote for Labour is a vote for that.

While the mushy section of leftists back up the Labour Party and try to act as enablers for its xenophobic, repressive and all-round anti-working class policies, there is an alternative, an anti-capitalist alternative.

Chunks of the left are revealing themselves to be merely anti-National Party rather than anti-capitalist. Our aim, however, is to get people to make a conscious political decision not to vote and begin the task of politicising the non-voters who already vastly outnumber the people who vote Labour. (Indeed, in the last election, more blue-collar workers voted National than Labour, seeing National as the lesser-evil).